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New IT Optimization Offerings From IBM Reduce Cost and Complexity for Midsize Companies

ARMONK, NY--(Marketwire - October 7, 2008) - IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced new BladeCenter
servers and System Storage offerings designed to help midsize businesses
simplify and automate the management of information technology resources,
applications, processes and services.

IBM is also introducing a new version of WebSphere's industry leading
application server that will help midsize businesses reduce both cost and
IT complexity, while enhancing the speed of customer response time on the
Web. The new version will also provide a highly scalable and reliable
platform for midsize businesses to collaborate and securely exchange data.

These Express Advantage IT optimization solutions are built on an open
architecture to optimize computing resources and feature advanced
virtualization capabilities in addition to dynamic capabilities that reduce
the number of hardware components and software resources. This allows
midsize companies to free up floor space, save energy and simplify
administrative tasks. The new offerings are the latest addition to the
Express Advantage portfolio, reflecting IBM's ongoing commitment to help
midsize businesses find new and affordable ways to apply technology for
greater value.

According to the IBM Global 2008
CEO Study, more than one third of all CEOs from midsize companies
identified the innovative use of information technology as a key factor
affecting their ability to respond to rapidly changing business conditions.

"Implementation speed, adding new capabilities and reducing complexity are
all critically important to helping our clients grow," said Mark Wyllie,
chief operating officer of Compuquip Technologies, Inc. "Through our
partnership with IBM, we have seen over and over again the value of server
and storage virtualization as well as a more flexible software
infrastructure. The benefits are increased productivity and return on
investment resulting from the elimination of strains on time and
resources."

IBM Express Advantage is a comprehensive portfolio of offerings that has
been rigorously tested to ensure that offerings are easy to buy and deploy
and are competitively priced. They are developed in conjunction with a
network of IBM-certified Business Partners who know their clients' industry
and marketplace. IBM Express Advantage offers enhanced capabilities to help
midsize customers navigate the breadth of IBM to find the right IBM and IBM
Business Partner resources.

"IBM's new IT optimization solutions give midsize companies maximum
performance and efficiency at an affordable price, offering a robust
infrastructure platform that can quickly and easily accommodate growth,"
said Marc Dupaquier, general manager, IBM Global Midmarket. "We're
committed to helping our midsize customers succeed in today's highly
competitive global economy with innovative business and technology
solutions built uniquely for their needs."

Optimizing IT to gain efficiency and competitiveness

The new IBM Express Advantage offerings include:

IBM Power 560 Express

The IBM
Power 560 Express combines IBM's industry-leading POWER6™ processor
technology with enhanced virtualization and energy efficiency, offering
outstanding price/performance and value for midsize organizations that want
to be responsive to changing business needs and realize significant
benefits for their application and database servers. With the new Power 560
Express clients can save up to 80 percent of the energy by consolidating 13
Sun Fire V490 servers on a single Power 560 server with PowerVM compared to
consolidating those same servers on four Sun SPARC Enterprise M5000 servers
with Dynamic System Domains.

IBM BladeCenter® LS22 Express and IBM BladeCenter LS42 Express

IBM BladeCenter LS22
and LS42
blade servers feature the latest quad-core AMD Opteron™ processors and
are available with solid-state drives, which are 4 times more reliable than
traditional drives and use 87 percent less power -- saving 20 watts per
blade. IBM offers the only blade servers with solid state drives.

The LS22 blade server is faster than competitive two socket blade servers
and is ideal for companies like financial services firms, universities and
research labs, and oil and gas companies that run high-performance
applications.

The LS42 blade server consumes up to 13 percent less power than comparable
blade offerings. It also provides 20 percent faster memory, so it is well
suited to run memory-intensive applications like those for virtualization
and database.

With the new 2+2 program IBM is announcing today, clients can start with
two-sockets on the LS42 server and expand to a four-socket server as their
business needs demand. This allows growing companies to only pay for the
capacity they need, giving them the flexibility to grow into their blades
and protect their investments.

BladeCenter S Express

IBM
BladeCenter S for smaller firms is now available with industry-first
shared storage, bringing enterprise-class storage capabilities to smaller
firms and branch offices that lack the IT staff and budgets to manage
expanding volumes of business information. With this innovative new
approach, IBM is cutting the cost of shared storage technology by 30-40
percent and -- supported by new, complementary features like Start Now
Advisor and BladeCenter Service Advisor -- making it easier to set up and
own (1).

BladeCenter S is specially designed to help small and medium-sized firms
simplify the management of technology needed to run a business -- from
servers, to phone systems and business applications. BladeCenter S can help
reduce the 25 to 45 servers used by an average midsize company by up to 80
percent (2).

IBM System Storage TS2900 Tape Autoloader Express

The IBM System
Storage TS2900 Tape Autoloader Express offers growing companies IBM's
latest generation Linear Tape-Open Tape™ (LTO™) tape drive featuring
up to 7.2TB of capacity. For midsize company owners and IT managers who
need increased capacity and data encryption for the midrange open-systems
environment, this offering provides entry-level automated backup for rack
systems with low-profile, high density storage capacity. This offering
incorporates IBM's new patented High Density slot technology and can be
operated remotely via an easy to use Web interface.

IBM System Storage 7214 Tape & DVD Enclosure Express

The IBM System Storage 7214
Tape & DVD Enclosure Express is a low-cost storage and archival
solution for IBM Power Systems that offers midsize companies higher
performance in the most compact and affordable packaging possible. The 7214
storage enclosure provides faster data transfer rates compared to existing
SCSI devices through its SAS Electronic Interface, and gives companies the
choice of several drive technologies, including DAT, LTO and DVD drives.
Its low-profile design enables it to be installed in one EIA unit (1U) of a
standard 19-inch server rack.

WebSphere Application Server - Express V7

In today's business environment, midmarket companies require faster
response from their IT infrastructure to enable them to address changing
market opportunity. In addition, they continue to look for ways to reduce
IT complexity for better security & management as well as reuse.

New performance enhancements to this solution deliver data center
efficiency via the ability to consolidate workloads enabling a smaller
footprint, less energy and less cost. New flexible management features also
improve efficiencies of administration and allow remote production resource
management of WebSphere Application Server - Express V7.

The solution delivers simplified programming models for building reusable
persistent objects through single-step installation and configuration,
wizards and default configurations. It also offers easy to navigate
documentation that includes extensive use of sample code to help ensure
fast and smooth start-up New Java EE 5 certification, EJB 3.0 support and
Java Persistence API (JPA) and Java Development Kit (JDK) 6.0.

Availability:

The 2+2 program will be available to LS42 customers in November. IBM
BladeCenter S with shared storage will begin shipping in volume later this
month.